


The Aftermath

by Canislondon



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Sherlolly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-02-17
Packaged: 2018-09-21 05:55:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9534701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canislondon/pseuds/Canislondon
Summary: Taking place immediately after the events of The Final Problem, Sherlock adjusts to living life the way that everyone else does- without risking his life every minute. His newfound humanity causes changes in him and those surrounding him, especially the woman he was so terrified of hurting- Molly Hooper.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after The Final Problem, but before the montage showing everything coming back into place. This is my first fanfiction on AO3, and I've never written a multi-chapter fic, so this is all new to me! Thank you for understanding! Comments and constructive criticism are incredibly welcome!

The car ride back was long and quiet. No one knew what to say or really had anything to say, so no one tried. Once everything had been sorted to the best of its ability, Sherlock and John had been escorted into a black government vehicle and driven in the direction of Baker Street, down roads bearing little traffic, as was to be expected at this hour of the night, or rather, morning. The recent events had taken a toll on almost everyone, and a significant toll at that. But the worst was over, in reality this time.  
Mycroft was fine, Sherlock had been assured. Mrs. Hudson had been entirely left alone, to everyone's relief. Mummy and Daddy Holmes had been contacted by Mycroft's people, and now both brothers were prepared and dreading a panicked call from their mother. Lestrade was fine but incredibly stressed, trying to explain the situation to Scotland Yard and divert the media as best he could.  


John was half asleep in the seat next to him with his elbow on the car door and his head in his hand, the tension finally dying down and allowing him to rest for the first time in what seemed like years, but was, in reality, roughly 19 hours. And Molly Hooper was... well, no one actually knew.  


All Sherlock knew was that he had extremely mixed feelings about Eurus. It pained him to recall that she was being returned to such an awful place as Sherrinford, but he couldn't help but feel overwhelmingly relieved. It was a new feeling. He had been experiencing a few of these lately.  


But just because he had been experiencing these, that didn't mean he was in any way prepared for them. Thoroughly believing that he was going to have to shoot his own brother, Sherlock had experienced what could only be described as the prologue of grief. He could only be glad that he never had to experience the rest of the story. Then again, he was never going to. He had already made the decision that if one of them were to die, it would have to be him, whether Mycroft or John liked it or not. Though, he hadn't considered what would happen if Eurus didn't like it. He had never before considered taking his own life. He thought it was the most ludicrous and selfish idea, stealing yourself away from your loved ones while you could have spared them the pain. He still thoroughly believed it was ridiculous, but he had learned that he would accept making a ridiculous decision if it meant saving the lives of the people he loved. In that case, he decided, it wasn't stealing, but rather making an aching trade.  


He also wasn't prepared for Eurus's games. The three Garrideb brothers, he could block out and power through, the same for the Governor and his wife. "Soldiers,' he recalled. However, the one person who's mortality he had not been able to cope with had been none other than Molly Hooper. The count down, the psuedo-bombs, the coffin with... those words... inscribed on it.  


He lost control. He was not yet ready to ponder the question, "why?"  


All of this was new to him. _He_ was new to him. This human that he found inside himself was a stranger. Sherlock Holmes was the man who didn't understand sentiment. He was the man that would humiliate a woman in front of all of their mutual friends, who would let his best friend grieve and believe he was dead for two years. The man who would use a human being’s emotions as a passkey, and who would remain unaffected as he watched someone’s time run out. The man who would call the kidnapping of children "neat" and who would smile at the suicide note of an adulterer. _That_ was Sherlock Holmes.  


This man cried. This man hugged his broken friend and made it a point to remember names. He spoke warmly and kindly to children, and wanted to be there for his estranged sister. He complimented his brother and regarded his landlady like a mother. He nearly killed himself in his own process of grieving and was still more concerned with the stress level of one of his friends. This man loved.  


This man was a stranger.  


Sherlock did not detest him, as he would have previously. He was only confused, a bit frightened even. He had spent his whole life hiding himself away at the encouragement of his brother, pushing down all hints of humanity, not even allowing himself the luxury of regular food and sleep, and not even really being conscious of doing it. To let every feeling that slipped out of the depths of his heart and into his mind cross his lips seemed like such a foreign concept, and both despite and because of this, Sherlock could admit to himself that he was, like a little boy afraid of the dark, _frightened_ of the impending unknown.  
It was funny, because he had rarely felt tired in the last several years. No matter how little he slept, rather he spent eight hours awake or seventy-two, he never felt exhaustion. Despite John yelling at him, reminding him that his body required rest, he only slept when he saw best. Sleep was a calculated decision, as far as he was concerned, only considered in order to determine what would increase his usefulness in the moment and allow him to function to the best of his ability in the situation at hand. He never, ever, slept because he was experiencing such a human weakness as fatigue. But for once in Sherlock Holmes's life, he was deeply and utterly exhausted. He was done for the day, or at least he wanted to be.  


He drifted as the street lights rhythmically lit his face, his thoughts swirling around and fading in and out until he could no longer grasp any of them. After giving up fighting the pull, he finally shut his eyes, as if the dark nothingness could provide him with the answers he didn’t have the energy to find himself.


	2. Wrong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly considers the credulity of Sherlock's confession.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These are short chapters... I know. I just tend to want to separate different bits of information more... maybe I should separate them in the chapter more... Oh well for now! Enjoy! :)

Molly’s day had already been trying. 

Within the first few hours of waking up, a friend from work had called to let her know that they were downsizing at Bart’s. She knew she wouldn’t be fired, she was far above proficient at her job and was far more capable than many of her co-workers, though she tried to ignore it. She felt very secure in her position, yet since the idea had been placed, it lingered over her head like a dark cloud. 

However, she would have been in a fine mood despite this if it had not been for her sister’s recent divorce, of which she had just heard about. Evidently, she and her husband had been fighting for months and finally decided to throw in the towel. This all came as a shock, since she was convinced that she’d never seen two people so in love. Molly had been there throughout their relationship. She was there when her sister came back beaming from the first date, when they officially deemed themselves a "couple," and when her sister called in tears because he just proposed. Molly had helped her sister pick out a dress and had been the maid of honor in their wedding. The demise of her sister’s seemingly perfect marriage caused her to wonder in the back of her mind if there was really hope for any of them.

On top of this, watching Rosie the night before had kept Mary’s death at the forefront of her mind, and left her wondering how anyone could murder-whether she was the target or not- such a loving and luminescent person. Though she was an ex assassin, Molly had scarcely known such a staggeringly wonderful mother and friend. It made her sick to think about how Rosie would never see her mother smile at her the way she had, and never know first hand what an astounding person she was. Rosie would be raised- oh isn’t that a scary thought, Molly is now a mother in a way- by John, Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock Holmes, and herself. Everything to do with the Watsons and Rosie was hitting her especially hard today. 

And she had a mild headache.

In an effort to combat the only aspect of her tenseness that was able to be remedied, she decided to make herself some tea to banish her headache. She had just taken an ibuprofen that hadn’t kicked in yet and was now leaning over the sink, hands near the back of her neck, she wasn’t quite sure why- when the phone rang with either the last or only thing she needed today. 

She didn't want to pick up. She didn't want to. 

"Hello, Sherlock."

~

Well, her headache had gone. That was positive. 

But in its place was a broken feeling in the pit of her chest that prohibited her from ceasing to cry. 

She sat on her couch, tea abandoned, sobbing into the sleeve of her stupid, stupid sweater that she had always loved but now knew would only bring back painful memories. She didn’t really think that her sweater was stupid but right now she thought everything was stupid.

She thought she was stupid. How in the world could she have believed him? How could she have been wrong in telling whether or not he was lying? 

Maybe that was it. Maybe the problem was that she was too confident in her ability to asses the credulity of his words. She was wrong. She had to have been wrong.

When he had said it the first time, after she told him to, he did not mean it. That she knew for sure, and she knew it the moment those words came through the phone. But something changed in that eternity that was four seconds. When that voice came through the phone again, any doubt in Molly’s mind that Sherlock was lying had been entirely abolished. It took a moment, to get the words that she had tried so hard to bury to fully resurface, but she said it. She had said it.

Why did she say it?

Sherlock had to have been lying. Even if she was wrong, she did know him well enough to know that after saying something like that, if he meant it, he wouldn’t have hung up without another word. That led her to believe that she really had been the unwilling subject of some cruel experiment, one that she wanted desperately to put past Sherlock but couldn’t completely bring herself to. And he definitely had to have known she meant her words. 

She felt so exposed, so stripped. Everything that she had tried to conceal had been ripped right out of her. Had he meant it when he said it- and gracious, did it sound like he did- she would be over the moon, but not in the same way the Molly Hooper from four years ago would have been. She would not feel giddy. This new version of Molly Hooper would no longer feel like she was running and going nowhere. She would no longer feel like she had to “tough it out” every time she was near Sherlock. She would finally feel like there was a resolution to the years of half-concealing her feelings, guarding her heart, and futily struggling to save herself from the perpetual limbo that was being unconditionally in love with a self-proclaimed sociopath that openly contemned any forms of affection. Molly had believed nearly forever that his disdain for romantic affection was entirely forced, and just a fabrication in the same way that a significant portion of his personality was. From Molly’s perspective, it seemed that Sherlock had built himself into what he considered a utopia of a man, but in practice became a dystopia that slowly destroyed him and those he loved. And… that included Molly.

So maybe she had believed for a while that he loved her at some level. Not necessarily romantically, as she was never sure he would ever allow himself to feel that emotion, let alone admit it. But she realized that she had always felt that there was something else happening behind those calculating blue eyes. She had always felt that the relationship wasn’t entirely one-sided.

But if this really was an experiment, and it sure seemed like it was, then that couldn’t have been true. Molly Hooper would have had to have been wrong.

The idea made her want to be sick.

Oh no. What if he really never felt that way? Not even a little? What if she was wrong- entirely wrong?

What if he never truly cared for her in any sense? Maybe he had just been taking advantage of her this entire time. Maybe he didn't mean it when he said that she "mattered the most." He could still have been trying to lead her on so she would continue to help him in the future.

Oh no. Oh please no.

Maybe he really was a sociopath. No- more than that, he had purposefully strung her along, lying, lying, breaking her heart, breaking her engagement for fun. Not a sociopath, a bloody psychopath. 

It didn't seem that way but maybe she was wrong. She could have been wrong. Oh, please, no, what if Molly Hooper was wrong?


End file.
